Without question, the Supreme Court's decision in McCutcheon vs. Federal Election Commission constitutes a significant step toward further silencing citizen voice in our democratic system and giving greater voice to the already overwhelming influence of a few of the wealthiest donors.

The most devastating aspect of the court's decision comes in the opening sentence of the majority opinion, where Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a five-member majority, states:

"There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders. Citizens can exercise that right in a variety of ways: They can run for office themselves, vote, urge others to vote for a particular candidate, volunteer to work on a campaign and contribute to a candidate's campaign. This case is about the last of those options."

With that opening, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court repositions voting - the singular, most important expression of civic participation - to just one "option" among a menu of potential means by which one may participate in the electoral process, carrying no more weight than volunteering for a campaign. It was in 1888, however, that the Supreme Court issued its often-quoted statement that "the right to vote …is preservative of all rights." It is therefore impossible to reconcile that view of voting - as the ultimate marker of citizenship in a participatory democracy - with the position accorded voting in yesterday's McCutcheon opinion, as one item on a laundry list of "options" for citizen participation.

This tension has important consequences for the court's future voting discrimination jurisprudence. It reveals a critical connection between the court's hostility to core protections against discrimination enshrined in the Voting Rights Act and the court's increasingly laissez faire campaign-finance jurisprudence.

In the end, the court adopts a position about voting itself that is at odds with this country's embrace and understanding of voting as an irreducible and all-important mark of citizenship. A core tenet of the civil rights movement rested on the centrality of voting as an expression of citizenship and dignity in our republic. The refusal of southern states to allow blacks to vote was likewise premised on an understanding that voting would confer on black people not just political power, but access to the full and equal citizenship guaranteed by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.

When he signed the Voting Rights Act into law in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson said "the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice." Chief Justice Earl Warren in Reynolds v. Sims described "the right to vote freely for a candidate of one's choice" as "the essence of a democratic society."

With this ruling, a majority of our Supreme Court likened voting to writing a check to a preferred candidate or handing out campaign stickers. This perspective does not augur well for this court's future engagement with challenges to voter suppression and the court's view of Congress' power to shield voting from potentially discriminatory procedures.

It's time for voting rights lawyers and activists to recognize that we must not only confront the court majority's view that discrimination in voting is a thing of the past. We must also reckon with the fact that a majority of this court contests the very idea of voting and elections as exalted and sacrosanct markers of citizenship entitled to protections from money or from arbitrary and discriminatory burdens.

The opinion in McCutcheon provides a window into this court's startling democratic view, which reorders the primacy of voting among the instruments of democratic participation to which every citizen is entitled, to one "option" among many.